Did One Direction Do Backstreet Boys Justice? We Get The Answer!

What’s old is new again. And boy bands are out to prove that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Very few acts are feeling the love like the Backstreet Boys, who are soaking in all the recognition from the new acts.

Just last week, Howie Dorough tweeted his respect for One Direction, who covered the classic BSB tune, “I Want It That Way,” during a stop on their Take Me Home tour.

Heard @onedirection sang one of our Backstreet Boy songs “I Want It That Way” at a recent concert in Sweden. Thanks guys and much respect!!!

“I think they did a good job on it,” Dorough told MTV News. “One of the writers, that’s written almost all their big stuff, Rami Yacoub, he worked with us in the early days with Max Martin and stuff like that, some of the biggest songs of ours. The sound that they’ve originated was definitely not too far from where it came, from the same Swedish camp. It’s nice to see groups like that pay homage to us. We definitely paid homage to groups in the earlier days that we admired like Boyz II Men, Color Me Badd, Shai, New Edition. So it’s cool. I think they did a great job. It seemed like it went over really well.

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“I get Backstreet Boys Google [alerts] every day and it seemed like it was there for three or four days,” he added.

But, it’s not just 1D who are adding some new millennium sparkle to that classic era. Both Big Time Rush have put their 2013 stamp on the video for “I Want It That Way,” reimagining it in videos
for “Walks Like Rihanna” and “Like Nobody’s Around” respectively.

Howie said, “We haven’t seen the Big time rush yet. I heard on Mario Lopez [on ’Extra’] that they were going to do something. I was like ’Ah man, I wonder if they knew the Wanted just did the same thing’.”